On Fox News last night as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, A.B. Stoddard, and Bill Kristol condemned Dutch activist Geert Wilders as a “demagogue” and a “fascist.”
Mr. Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands, produced a controversial documentary on Islam in Holland called “Fitna.” In the short film, Mr. Wilders argued that “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’” and that the Prophet Muhammad would “. . .in these days be hunted down as a terrorist.”
In the past, the former member of the Dutch National Parliament was a frequent guest on Fox News. Last February, Bill O’Reilly welcomed Mr. Wilders to America, while condemning a scared Britain for banning him entrance to the country.
While Mr. Beck labeled Mr. Wilders as a “fascist,” Mr. Krauthammer said that the popular Dutch politician, who is a leading candidate for Prime Minister, doesn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism.
Ms. Stoddard expressed her agreement with Krauthammer and added that “if people like this (Mr. Wilders)) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.
The well-orchestrated attacks on Mr. Wilders came in the wake of news that Rupert Murdoch, the CEO and principal stockholder of News Corps, the parent company of Fox News, will make Abu Dhabi, the headquarters of his global media operations in the Middle East.
Mr. Murdock has established strong links with the Arab Muslims, last month agreeing to invest 70 million dollars in the Rotana Group, an enterprise is controlled by Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Prince Talal, in turn, now owns 7% of News Corps. He is #22 on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people.
The change in Fox News and its stance on Islam has been noted by Walid Shoebat, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who converted to Christianity.
Mr. Shoebat says that Fox New now prohibits critics of Islam and Islamic terror from appearing on its broadcasts.
He contends that the prohibition stems from the fact that Prince Talal is now the second-largest shareholder in News Corporation, the parent company of the Fox News Channel.
“He himself (Prince bin Talal) said, ‘I just had to make a phone call to [tell them to] stop using the word Muslim’ regarding the rioting in France,” Mr. Shoebad notes. “Bill O’Reilly says to Ibrahim Hooper, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that he is an upstanding citizen. Since when was the head of CAIR an upstanding citizen?”
Mr. Shoebat adds that viewers will no longer be seeing any so-called “Islamophobes” on Fox.
“Today, I’m not invited at Fox News. Neither is Robert Spencer or Brigitte Gabriel,” he laments. “But Ibrahim Hooper is invited to speak at Fox News. It used to be that experts on terrorism who are critical of the Islamic views [were] able to get a voice on Fox News. Those days are gone.”
Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., author of such best-selling works as Osama’s Revenge: The Next 9/11 and The Day of Islam, has also been missing from Fox News in recent years, after making scores of appearances on top-rated Fox broadcasts over the past five years.
Mr. Shoebat says that instead of airing those critical views of Islam, Fox News now legitimizes Hooper, the spokesman for CAIR, a group which he maintains is a front for the terrorist group Hamas.
Today’s the day for women in Afghanistan to don their bright blue burqas, obtain the services of male companions, and head off to Herat to take part in International Women’s Day.
Thousands showed up for the gala event where they were treated to readings from the Koran and assurance from imams that they will remain subservient to males under the Karzai government, although they might (if they are beyond their child-bearing years) obtain permission to work in the poppy fields.
Hillary Clinton, who championed the event, failed to make an appearance in her latest hijab, and Michelle Obama, who expressed her concern for the plight of Afghan women, was nowhere in sight (unless, of course, she was concealed by her black burqa).
The speakers at the event – - Islamic scholars and male government officials – - made no mention of the slave markets in Nangarhar where women are sold to the highest bidder and of the refusal of the current regime to protect women from rape and murder.
The reaction of the women, for the most part, was difficult to discern since the majority wore full facial coverings.
No questions arose from the audience over the public floggings and stonings of women for suspected acts of adultery, let alone demands for suffrage and equal rights.
Still and media, the media treated the event as a ground-breaking celebration, despite the fact that the women have little to celebrate.
According to the U.N.’s Human Rights Watch, 87.2% of the Afghan women are subjected to physical, sexual, and psychological violence.
55% of all brides have not reached their 16th birthday. Many are married to men who are over 60.
70% of all marriages are forced, with no possibility of annulment or divorce.
89% of the Afghan women are illiterate and unschooled – - most deprived of even an elementary school education.
The women are not permitted to appear in public without a male companion and without head to toe coverings.
They are permitted neither to drive nor to seek employment.
The UN further reports that the plight of women may have worsened since the US invasion and occupation.
The women who sat patiently during the long-winded male orations and Islamic exhortations appeared to appreciate a day from the drug and dung heap of their villages, even though the event failed to include a fashion show of the latest Islamic styles, including the increasingly popular burqaini bathing suit.
Muslim students from the Middle East paid a California man millions dollars to attend college for them, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials maintain.
Eamonn Daniel Higgins, 46, resident of the upscale city of Laguna Niguel, received stashes of cash to study sociology, marketing, English, business and mathematics at 10 colleges in southern California beginning in 2002, authorities allege. The colleges include Cal State Los Angeles, Irvine Valley College, and Santa Monica College.
In federal court yesterday, Mr. Higgins, a U.S. citizen, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. He faces five years in prison if convicted.
Mr. Higgins, according to the immigration officials, attended class, wrote papers and took exams for about 120 students from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Turkey and Qatar.
The demand for the services of Mr. Higgins became so high he allegedly hired staff, including a blond woman who posed as a Middle Eastern man, the agents allege.
Foreigners who want to study in the United States must attend school full-time to keep their visas valid.
“We have seen visa fraud schemes before, but we have never seen anything quite like this,” said Debra Parker, Los Angeles acting special agent in charge of investigations for the immigration agency. “This is something really sophisticated.”
Although immigration agents don’t believe that any of the students had links to terrorism, Parker said Monday the agency was still investigating. “It definitely highlights some of the vulnerability, the way these people were able to go and compromise the integrity of the immigration system,” Parker said.
In a related incident, Lydia Menocal and Ofelia Macia have been arrested by ICE officials for providing phony student visas to hundreds of Muslim students at a bogus school called the Florida Language Institute in Miami. The two women made $2.4 million from the scam.
According to the ICE indictment, only five percent of the 600 foreign national aliens were legitimate students. The rest never showed up for class and remained “enrolled” so they could enter and stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation.
Aired on LBC TV (Lebanon) – June 19, 2008 – 00:03:08 :
Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub’i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant: It Is Allowed to Marry a Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is postponed. The Prophet Muhammad, Whose Model We Follow, Married ‘Aisha When She Was Six and Had Sex with Her When She Was Nine :
Following are excerpts from an interview with Dr. Ahmad Al-Mu’bi, a Saudi marriage officiant, which aired on LBC TV on June 19, 2008:
Child sex normal in Islam and Quran
Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 65:
Narrated ‘Aisha:
That the Prophet married her when she was SIX years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.
Canadian journalist Antonia Zerbisias published an article in the Toronto Star (January 27, 2010) bearing the title: “Gazan weddings not aboutpedophilia”… In the beginning of the column, Zerbisias made it clear that she didn’t write it to defend Hamas, which she criticized for its unacceptably strict attitude towards women. She explained that her main intention was to rebut allegations disseminated like mushrooms after rain on the web and in emails accusing Hamas of organizing a mass marriage in July 2009 in which 10-year old girls were married to Palestinian men. Zerbisias contends that the little girls dressed like brides, as shown in the pictures and video clips documenting the mass marriage, were not the brides themselves, but relatives of the brides who were not exposed to the media for modesty reasons.
In her column, Zerbisias tries to find out the real motivation behind disseminating the false allegations on the pedophile mass marriage of Hamas. “That’s because, despite mass Hamas weddings in the past, including one covered by the BBC in 2005, there were no previous accusations of pedophilia. It was only in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, which killed some 1,400 Gazans, including hundreds of children, that this lie began,” she wrote. [1]
An independent probe I’ve made of Palestinian open sources shows that Zerbisias’s first argument is very likely correct. The 10-year old girls were not the real brides. However, an official list of the brides’ names was never published by Hamas and there is no way to know for certainty their exact age. Ahmed Jarbour, the Hamas official in Gaza responsible for social activity, told WND’s reporter Ahron Klein that the youngest girl who was married at the ceremony was 16-years old and most brides were above the age of 18. [2] It seems that those who published the allegation against Hamas were deluded by the misleading pictures of the event and did not conduct a thorough investigation.
Examining Zerbisias second argument regarding the motivation of intentionally spreading out “the lie” after Operation Cast Lead brought about interesting findings. The phenomena of early marriage was well known in Palestinian society long before the Israeli military operation in Gaza started on December 27, 2008. According the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 682 girls aged 14 and younger were legally married in 2000. Two of them were married to men who were 35 or older, 13 to men 30 to 34, 117 to men 25 to 29, 378 to men 20 to 24 and 172 to men 15 to 19. Child marriages of girls 14 and younger made up 2.9 per cent of the total number of registered marriages. In the same year, 13,163 Palestinian girls between 15 and 19 were legally married, surpassing 55 per cent of all registered marriages. [3]
Local human rights organizations are deeply concerned about child marriage in Palestinian society. Participants of a conference in Gaza dedicated to this issue in January 2008, organized by the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), warned of the “significant rise in child marriage rate” and its severe psychological and physical implications on the youth. [4]The phenomenon of early marriage was also discussed in April 2008 in another conference held by the Palestinian Red Crescent and Widad Society. [5]
The Palestinian law, amended in 2005 and valid in the Gaza Strip, set 18 as the minimum age for marriage. However, it gives authority to the Islamic court to approve marriages of minor females and males alike if the supreme judge of the Islamic court is convinced that they are mature physically and mentally. [6]
The power of the Islamic court in Gaza Strip was reinforced after Hamas took control of the Palestinian Authority institutions in a violent military coup in June 2007. The Arab daily Al Hayat reported in December 2008 , a few days before Cast Lead Operation, that the Hamas parliament in Gaza voted in favour of a law allowing courts to mete out sentences in accordance with Sharia law. According to the bill, if approved, courts would be able to condemn offenders to a series of violent punitive measures that include whipping, severing of hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences for people who negotiate with a foreign government “against Palestinian interests” and engage in any activity that can “hurt Palestinian morale.” Hayat further reported that any Palestinian caught drinking or selling wine would suffer forty lashes at the whipping post if the bill passes. Convicted thieves would lose their right hand[7]. Since then, the Hamas government has slowly but gradually implemented a series of rules in accordance with Islamic law that affect many aspects of daily life, including the enforcement of a dress code for women on the street, in schools and in the courts and a prohibition against mixed-gender public ceremonies. [8]
The Kuwaiti Awan newspaper’s journalist, Shima Yusuf, investigated the phenomena of child marriage in Gaza in light of reports on the flourishing import of young Egyptian girls from poor families for prostitution and slavery under the cover of marriage. In her article, published on December 28, 2009, Shima Yusuf writes the following:
“There was a series of accounts on a new commerce via the tunnels [of Rafah] in which minor Egyptian females from extremely poor families were brought to the Gaza Strip in a somehow dark game in which ends in either their marriage, services in houses or working in the oldest profession in history!
“… one of the passengers [of the taxi in which the reporter drove] started talking on the golden solution via the tunnels, saying that it is possible to get an Egyptian woman for only $1,000 paid to the middleman at the tunnel’s entrance and handing him a copy of the groom’s identification card…
“Quick tour at Rafah’s tunnels reveals that the story that I’ve heard in the taxi was not a joke… Abu Asi [40 year old, working in the tunnels] is saying fearlessly: “I’m married to three women. The first one is a Palestinian who lives in my house located in the eastern area of the city of Khan Yunis [south of Gaza] and raises the children. The second and the third are Egyptians and were brought during my many shuttles in the tunnels between Egypt and Rafah. I persuaded them to marry me because of their extreme poverty.
“Later I decided to make this marriage an investment [business] by purchasing a house in Egyptian Rafah [Rafah is divided between Egypt and the Gaza Strip] in which my two wives are living and helping me in bringing young girls from the communities adjacent to Rafah, and particularly from the villages of Al-Sharqia district [of Egyprt]. That is done by convincing the families of the poor young girls to marry their daughters to Palestinian men.
“Giving his consent to marry his daughter [to a Palestinian man] the father receives an amount that does not surpass 1,000 Egyptian pounds [193 CAD] and a copy of the groom’s ID and his phone number, and then the brides lodge in my house in Rafah and the suitable husband is found for them. After finding the husband from whom I receive 1,000 USD, I send a copy of his ID and his phone number to my two wives and they in their turn send it to brides’ families. Then the brides are smuggled via the tunnels and handed to their grooms at the entrance of the tunnel in the Palestinian Rafah”.
“When asked on the fate of the young girls brought by him, Abu Asi said: “I don’t care what happens with them. The most important thing to me is closing the deal, even knowing that some of them will be married, some will be sent for working in rich people houses in Gaza and others are destined for the many drug dealers and pimps operating in area of south eastern Gaza.
“I asked Abu Asi on the number of minor girls lodged in his house. He said: “the number is beyond my expectations and that is an indication to the professionalism of my two wives and their capability of persuasion which made me renting more than a house as the number of the young girls reached now hundreds”. [9]
In conclusion, 16-year old females, minors by Western standards, were married in the mass wedding held by Hamas in July 2009. However, the report regarding 10-year old brides is groundless. Probing the wide spectrum of this issue reveals that child marriage is well known and rooted in Palestinian society based on its culture and religion. Disturbing media accounts shed the light on “prosperous import” of minor females from Egypt via Rafah tunnels for slavery and prostitution. The abundant information on child marriage originates from Palestinian sources and has nothing to do with Operation Cast Lead.
[1] http://www.thestar.com/living/article/756173–gazan-weddings-not-about-pedophilia
Mohammed heard one of his wives was leaving him, so he rushed home where he found her on the carpet in front of the tent with her belongings; he sat beside her and said, I heard you were planning to leave me?
She replied, Yes, I heard your other wives saying you were a pedophile! Mohammed thinks for a minute or so and then responds, that’s a mighty big word for a 6 year old.”
A nighttime “ethnic cleansing” raid by Muslims on a village near Nigeria’s turbulent city of Jos resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Christians, officials said.
Unconfirmed reports indicated that 500 people were killed in the attack at Dongon Nahowa.
Authorities say the invaders were Fulani herdsmen, who seek to establish Nigeria as an Islamic republic ruled by Islamic law.
In recent months, Nigeria has experienced a wave of ethno-religious attacks
Reports from the village said the 2-hour attack Sunday caught the villagers unaware. Several villagers who escaped said the invaders used guns, swords and knives to cut down their victims, including children. Some victims were beheaded and burned, reports said.
Jos is the capital of Nigeria’s Plateau State.
Gregory Yenlong, Plateau information commissioner, said the government was shocked by the violence, the news agency in Lagos, Nigeria, reported.
Describing the attack as an “ethnic cleansing” of the Berom people, Yenlong called for the arrest of Saleh Bayare, a Fulani from Bassa area of Plateau State.
Less than two months ago, 326 people died in two days of religious and ethnic fighting in the region.
50% of Nigeria is now Islamic. Twenty years ago, the country was a bastion of Christianity in Africa with 90% of the population adhering to the Christian faith.
A French nun’s return to illness will delay the canonization of Pope John Paul II.
Pope Benedict XVI placed his predecessor on the fast track for sainthood, and there had been speculation John Paul would be beatified on October 16, the anniversary of his election to the papacy, the Guardian reports. The Vatican has now scheduled the canonization of six saints on October 17, which bars the beatification of his predecessor the day before.
To become a saint requires evidence of posthumous miracles. Sister Marie Simon-Pierre said three years ago she had been relieved of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease after praying to John Paul, who also suffered from Parkinson’s.
Now, a Polish newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, reports Simon-Pierre symptoms have returned. The newspaper also said her doctor, on his Web site, suggested she did not suffer from Parkinson’s but from a disease with the same symptoms that is known to go into remission.
Vatican sources told the Guardian a panel had been scheduled to meet in April to examine Simon-Pierre’s reported cure.
Other factors may block John Paul II’s path to sainthood. During his reign, the Banco Ambrosiano affair took place – - an affair by which the Vatican Bank with the aid of the international Mafia bilked billions from Italian investors.
The late pope also presided over the plague of pediophilia which drove hundreds of dioceses into bankruptcy and caused massive declines in church attendance and candidates for the priesthood.
John Paul II’s body already has been exhumed for examination by Vatican physicians for rell-tale signs of incorruptibility – - a sure sign of a saint. When the body of John XXIII was exhumed for examination more than a decade ago, the venerable pontif’s nose fell off.
Beatification is a papal decree that permits Catholics to venerate a person after his or her death. It is a preliminary step toward canonization, although it does not guarantee sainthood. Such a decree bestows the title “Blessed” to a departed soul.
To receive beatification, the candidate must perform a post-mortem miracle. Regarding such miracles, Father Peter Gumpel, a member of the Vatican’s saint-making commission,says; “We do not accept any cure as a miracle unless we are scientifically, humanly certain that the cure has been instantaneous, not expected, and complete.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a “big fabrication” that was used to justify the US war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.
OBAMA CONCENTRATES ON ISRAELI THREAT TO PEACEFUL IRAN
The US-led Western powers are scrapping tough measures incorporated in the original motion they drafted for a UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran, according to diplomats at the UN Center. To make the draft more acceptable to Russia and China, the blacklisting of Iran’s central bank has been replaced by a decision to “strengthen vigilance” over the bank’s transactions, leaving only new overseas Iranian banks to be targeted.
The text earlier dropped the restrictions proposed by France against Iran’s oil and gas industries, as well as the original US plan to halt supplies of gasoline and other refined oil products to Iran. As the haggling goes on, Moscow refuses to endorse a full arms embargo similar to the regime in place against North Korea.
debkafile reports: By the time it is tabled, the sanctions resolution will be toothless as an instrument for holding back Iran’s dash for a nuclear bomb and its weapons of delivery.
Tehran already senses the new penalties will leave it sitting pretty with its economy, military assets and commercial ties unimpaired.
China is holding out against any talk of sanctions, stalling Western efforts to convene an early conference of the Six-Power negotiating forum next month to approve the motion for tabling.
As debkafile has predicted for months – not much will be left of the impressive sanctions package put together by the Obama administration to deprive Iran of its regular supplies of essential goods and cash flow. With a third of its economy crippled, Tehran was expected to come to heel on its nuclear program.
The package consisted of five restrictive measures:
1. A boycott of Iran’s banking system, particularly its central bank, to restrict its overseas commercial activities. This measure dropped by the wayside Friday, March 5.
2. A crackdown on foreign investment in Iran by withholding US and European insurance and reinsurance coverage.
3. Suspension of projects for developing Iran’s gas and oil deposits, mainly by withholding replacement equipment and spare parts.
4. Sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards Corps, its business empire and its military, technical and financial arms within Iran and overseas. If the measure survives the ongoing bargaining process, this boycott would affect the IRGC’s fleet of 115 merchant vessels and its giant military-civilian building complex, also subjecting its individual generals and executives to travel bans and freezing their assets.
Even so, dropping the ban on refined oils exports has left the IRGC which controls this sector with a large slice of its revenue intact.
5. Canvassing the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to close their ports and banks to Iranian merchandise and financial transactions.
For months, the US and Israel have worked hard to enlist worldwide support for these sanctions.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rounds of the Persian Gulf, Europe, China and latterly Brazil and Argentina. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu held talks in various European capitals, ending in Moscow. Defense minister Ehud Barak visited Washington every few weeks to keep Israel aligned with the Obama administration’s efforts. Last week, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon and Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer were in Beijing to argue the case against allowing Iran to become a nuclear power.
The reasons this carefully-crafted sanctions tool is losing its edge are, firstly, because Washington went for international endorsement without showing the way first. Had the Obama administration led the way by starting to clamp down stiff sanctions in stages itself from the end of 2009, as the US president promised Netanyahu, the enterprise might have attained enough momentum to gather in key European nations.
Instead, the effort is fading, as attested to by Clinton’s statement last week that instead of March, “several months” were needed to get the measures going. Key world powers, such as Moscow and Beijing, took this second postponement as an invitation to press harder for softer penalties.
Secondly, the North Korean example has demonstrated that sanctions don’t work if not backed by stern measures. Pyongyang has not only refused to dismantle its nuclear program, but no one is stopping its transfers of nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Iran and Syria.
Thirdly, whenever asked in world capitals what would happen if sanctions failed, US emissaries had no answer, while their Israeli partners could only hint at a military option as the only remaining recourse.
Most world powers therefore switched the main thrust of their Iran policies toward strengthening the Obama administration’s hand in opposing a Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, thus leaving the sanctions threat without a follow-up strategy.
The White House on Friday announced a “summit on entrepreneurship” to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Muslims.
The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.
“The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Obama first spoke of the entrepreneurship conference in his signature June 4 speech in Cairo to the Islamic world.
In the closely watched address, Obama said the United States was seeking a “new beginning” with the Islamic world to rebuild relations that had sharply deteriorated over the past decade.
Obama promised at the time that he would convene a “presidential summit on entrepreneurship” by the end of 2009.
He said that the meeting would “identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.”
